Welcome to Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick and our special soul care summer. I'm Brian, your producer, and today we're revisiting a favorite conversation, Michael's talk with
author and teacher Brad Jersek on his book In Incarnation and Inclusion, Abba and Lamb. Together they wrestle with a real tension. How a high view of Jesus and a wide view of God's love can hold together rather than pulling us toward exclusion or a Christ we've made too small. Now, without any further delay, here's Michael with Brad Jersak.
Michael John CusickHey everybody, I am on the fourth floor of the Academy Center building overlooking Enie, Meanie, Sushi, Denny's, and Old Chicago, and it's another episode. And today I'm actually in the Restoring the Soul studio talking with my friend Brad Jersak. Hi, Brad. Thanks for having me. It's exciting to be here in the new space. I can't believe we're face to face. You and I had never met about two and a half years ago when you were on the podcast the first time and ruffled a lot of feathers in a kind of prophetic way. But you've been part of our Surfing for God weekend as a staff member helping us rescue men's hearts. And that's what we're here for as we head down today. And I really appreciate you sitting down to have a conversation, especially about your your book. The title itself is brilliant because it's short and sweet, which is what people go for these days. But the subtitle requires some explanation. Dare I say it's an inauspicious subtitle. In is the name of the book, and the subtitle is Incarnation and Inclusion, Abba and Lamb. So tell me about why you wrote this.
Brad JersakYeah, the there is a sense in which uh we've got a dilemma going on right now, and that is folks who really have a high view of Jesus Christ tend towards being exclusive. And so, of course, we would use John 14, 6 to say um Jesus Christ is the only way, the truth, and life that by which we come to the Father, and then that tends to be reduced into you need to join my club, you need to say the prayer, um, and so a high view of Jesus gets associated with exclusivism. And then on the other extreme, we've got these folks where they're realizing that God's love, Abba's love, is all inclusive and and embraces not only all people, but the whole cosmos. And the trouble on that end sometimes
is that in seeing seeing God's love extensive to everyone, um, they feel a need to diminish Jesus and to marginalize the centrality of the incarnation and and um want to have more of a generalized Christ spirit without reference to the Lamb on the cross and the resurrection. What I'm saying is that actually the higher your Christology, that's your theology of Christ, the higher your Christology, the wider you see Abba's love to be. That it is actually in focusing on this one, on this Jesus, that we come to see that uh God's arms are not too short to save.
Michael John CusickSo right away people are saying, well, okay, I know where this is going, and they've either tuned out or clicked on another podcast. But high Christology means that you have wider exclusion and Abba's arms are open wider. Um we'll come back to the theology of that, but how did you personally get interested in this? Because you you have seasons and and and periods where you're always curious and exploring new things.
Brad JersakYeah, a lot of it just comes from meeting people who clearly know God, who haven't heard of Jesus yet. Or let's say in twelve-step recovery, for example, those who've been praying to a higher power actually know God to be personal, responsive, loving, caring, and forgiving, in other words, Christ-like, and yet they're not so sure about churchianity. I can't discount their experience of God because I'm seeing it transform their lives. In fact, what's clear to me then is they have seen the light and responded to it, they have heard the word and embraced it, and what do you know? Christ is the light in the word. Now they're just waiting for a witness to come along and say, Behold the Lamb. So um I want to really affirm people's pre-Christian experience of God, and then think about
if they have an authentic spiritual experience and faith practices, why tell them about Jesus then? And what is the um fullness of their inheritance if they do?
Michael John CusickI love that idea. Uh, and there's a lot of different analogies spinning around, but uh as you know, I'm part of a 12-step fellowship as well. Um in the past year I've I've re-engaged with that. And there are people who they are in some ways they seem more Christian than me in terms of where they have progressed in their journey. And I think in a time further back in my faith, I would say, well, uh God might be working to quote get them saved, but it's not actually God that's working in their life to bring healing and wholeness, that's their own effort and that kind of thing. And and it's uh refreshing, but it resonates with me that there is this pre-Christian state where the God that they know is actually the father
of Jesus, but they don't have a name on it. And the picture that pops into my mind, and tell me if this is really off theologically, but it's like uh uh a can of beans with a generic label on it. You know, so the there's something inside that's nourishing and real, but uh you don't know what the brand is, and you might or might not know that there's beans inside. Um when I was a kid growing up, we were on uh public assistance because my dad's unemployment at times, and we would get boxes of food with no labels. Um and and that's what I I'm kind of thinking about that that Jesus evangelism, that witness of the lamb that you spoke about is like putting the label on.
Brad JersakYeah. Even after they've eaten the beans. Yes, right? Yes. So they've partaken, they've partaken of the goodness of God, and sometimes the reason why it's even a cleaner theology than what we import as Christians is because um, in at least in 12-step recovery, they have encountered a God who's loving, caring, forgiving, personal and responsive, and then a Christian comes along and adds, Oh, and by the way, also shaming and retributive. Right. It's like, no. And that's why there's some resistance to Christianizing some of these programs, right? Because they they've seen it happen again and again.
Michael John CusickUh you talked about that at the tail end of our last interview on the podcast, that that Christians will, quote, sneak in retribution. So this idea that whatever your struggles are, uh what whatever you're dealing with, that you really ought to feel shame, that you really do need to somehow be different than who you are in order to be accepted and loved.
Brad JersakYeah, which then is actually to stray from the gospel. And so there's this call back. And so a lot of the book is just about my encounters with these kind of folks. Like, for example, one um uh one drug addict came to me to make amends for her attitude towards the church. And she said, I don't even know what you believe, and I've judged you. And I'm like, Well, okay, you can make amends, but I want to know why, you know, why is it you judged us? And it then it turns out um that she had been condescended to by neighbor Christians, and then she'd gone to a church one time and got molested. Well, excuse her if she's got a bit judgy about the church, but that was it, right? So we got talking and I made amends on behalf of the church and what had happened to her, that kind of uh condemnation that she had experienced. And then I said, But how long have you been in the program? Oh, you know, ten years. And I
said, Well, then you must have a higher power. Tell me about it. And she said, Oh, yes, uh, on one of my overdoses, uh, the paramedics had to bring me back with paddles, but she said, on uh I could see myself leaving my body, and I turned and I saw this great pure light, and I reached out to the light, and it reached out to me and it entered my heart. And I've been praying daily to that pure light for ten years. Wow. Every day, and it's been setting her free. I'm like, okay, so this is the light John 1 talks about the true light that comes into the world and shines on everyone. Then, now, maybe ten years later, without all those associations with church, I can come along and say, and by the way, the light you encountered that day and that entered your heart that you've been partaking of also was embodied in the person of Jesus. And here's the added value.
Michael John CusickWow, and and that's utterly consistent with her experience of the light. Totally.
Brad JersakYeah, and so I have a lot of stories about that, but they lead me to the Cornelius story, where it's the same kind of thing. You know, Cornelius in the book of Acts, chapter 10, he's a Gentile. He gets he he um has faith practices like constantly praying and giving to the poor. And what the text says is that God heard his prayers, noticed his almsgiving, and then sends him an angelic visitation to go find out about the rest of the story from Peter. He goes to Peter, Peter's takeaway, he's the one who needs to be converted because they're gonna include the Gentiles. Peter's takeaway is these are literally the things God told Peter. Cornelius, prior to becoming a Christian, was already righteous, already acceptable, and already, I guess you could say he's in. But uh and and that Christ has already made him clean. So that so then we would ask as good evangelicals, well, what if he got in a chariot accident on the way there? Would he
have gone to heaven or hell? It's like, I don't know. He was righteous, acceptable, and clean, but Peter doesn't conclude that he needs to negate all of that, but also Peter doesn't conclude he doesn't need to hear about Jesus. He said, Let me tell you about the Lamb. He preaches the gospel, the spirit falls on Cornelius, and what happens? Cornelius goes from being a God fearer to a God lover, and he receives the spirit of sonship by which he can cry out Abba, and that's what Jesus brings to the table. Many people come to God apart from faith in Jesus, but it's coming to faith in Jesus that we experience God as all inclusive Abba. So this is like John Wesley. He comes, finds the First Nations or the Native Americans, and he says, These people know God. They pray, they have a relationship with God. This is for real already. Why tell them about Jesus? So they could know their fullness of their inheritance and have full assurance. They don't need to be afraid anymore, they don't need to make sacrifices anymore, they don't need to live in guilt and shame anymore. And so that's that's what I see in Cornelius and in John Wesley. We acknowledge what's already there, friendship with God, or a relationship with God, and then we point to the Lamb who's taking care of sin and shame and all of that, and particularly the problem of death.
Michael John CusickWhat is it about the lamb name, title, uh I don't want to say metaphor that you're drawn to? Because you talk about Jesus and then you talk about the lamb, and Jesus is the lamb, but unpack that a little.
Brad JersakYeah, I think the important thing, this is I'm I I'm starting just with John 1, right? So you've got the light and the word revealed to everyone, but then John the Baptist comes along and he says, This light and this word, it's it's the lamb that takes away the sin of the world. And so what I'm drawn to there is this idea that um our clearest revelation of the nature of God is on the cross. That the lamb slain, risen, and glorified is our way of knowing God as Abba. If you don't know that the Lamb is slain, risen, and glorified, if you if you don't know he's he's given himself in self-giving love for the world, then you might think God is more like Jupiter or Zeus or Molech. All these other images of God, even in Christianity, we forget that the Lamb is the revelation
of the nature of God, and we make him into our superhero. And uh so so the Lamb narrows our focus to see the true nature of God as this self-giving, radically forgiving lover.
Michael John CusickUh a lot of times in my own journey and story, um I think I have resisted wanting to see God as revealed in a lamb. And I know that the different pictures and metaphors and imagery in scripture are not exclusive to one another, but uh the lamb is meek, the lamb is uh mild, the lamb is slaughtered, the lamb uh needs to be shepherded, and that doesn't seem on the surface like a very powerful, triumphal almighty God, right? Right. But but that's the greatest power.
Brad JersakThat is the greatest power. And if you think about the Beatitudes then in Matthew 5 as almost like a biography of Jesus. It's very lamb-like. Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, and blessed are the merciful and and and so on. And you're like, oh, it's not describing Zeus on crack, you know, it's it's it is describing this one who's entered into the depths of our weakness, and that's precisely where we find our salvation. If you have a super god, you're gonna try to measure up to your super god, but if you have a lamb, and let's face it, also a shepherd who comes to find us as lambs, um, you have to be in touch with brokenness and weakness, etc.
Michael John CusickI want to back up a second, and I'm gonna have a hard time articulating the idea that I'd like to discuss, but I'll start with a story. Uh Dallas Willard once said, and I've I've heard him say this, and then he's written this in a couple places, he said uh something that at the time it
shocked me that he said it. The kingdom of God is open to everyone, regardless of their standing or position in life, society, or the world. And uh today that that resonates with me 100%. Um and he was not making a statement about universalism or that you know everybody, even if they're atheists, just die and automatically float on a cloud to heaven. Um but someone asked him in the crowd if that's true, if the kingdom of God is open to everyone, then why do missions? And his answer was so beautifully simple. He said, Well, to tell them about Jesus, of course. Yeah.
And the thought is that we tell people about Jesus because they're separated from God and this connects them to God, and then they can go to heaven if we tell them about Jesus, versus hitting pause and assume for a moment that God is perfect love, that God desires relationship, that God has reconciled the world to himself on the cross in Christ, and that telling people about Jesus is basically, and it this is just a another way of saying what you've said, that look at the cross and that's what God is like. To tell people about Jesus is to say, if you want to go to heaven, here's the guy that you're gonna be with. Right. This is the nature of the God that you will spend eternity with, and if you don't um believe in weakness and humility and uh giving up power to have power, then you won't enjoy heaven very much. So here's the picture of what God is like. That is so freeing because then I don't I'm not hanging out with a non-Christian feeling like I have to, quote, share the gospel to get them saved. But as I just live my life and hopefully I'm Christ-like, that I'm giving them that picture. And as I tell them about Jesus, it's not to get them saved, but to say, let me shine a flashlight on the ultimate reality in the universe.
Brad JersakRight, yeah. And so there is a summons, there's nothing automatic about it, right? He Christ has already reconciled us by his blood. That's like Romans 5, Colossians 1. That's an already and it's a everyone. Um, then with that is a summons to receive that gift in the sense of um if they're already in, wouldn't it be nice if they got to enjoy it? Wouldn't it be nice if they could experience the freedom that's already theirs? So we're like, well, are they saved? Well, that's a weird word. How about like they were saved at the cross, they will be saved at the final resurrection, and in the meantime, there's these landmarks in their lives where they experience salvation, or let me put it in different words from scripture, fullness of life. So it's in knowing what Christ has already done for them that they can enter fullness of life instead of being oblivious to it. And I think you see that a lot in your in your work here at Restoring the Soul.
Michael John CusickYeah, the fullness of life is not just living with more passion and fulfilling your goals and your best life now, but it's it's about the kind of shalom, the wholeness, the restoration of a human being to full humanity. Right. Can we back up? Um you made a statement that for people listening closely, they're gonna go, check, he's a universalist, and and Kusick is a universalist, and and of course that's a very loaded word, but you said that they will be saved at the resurrection. And I know what you mean by that. Um and it's it's really developed quite well in all of your books, uh, especially Her Gates Will Never Be Shut Shut, I was gonna say closed. Um but say what you mean about that. Sure.
Brad JersakSo the idea is that we've so locked down to when you were saved to the day you said the prayer that we forget about the past element of that, which is that we were saved at the cross, and we forget about the future element of that, that we have not yet been given our
immortal resurrection, glorified bodies. So there's a past and there's a future sense of salvation in the New Testament. And then there's also an ongoing journey. It's the it's the path of the Jesus way by which we're being transformed from glory to glory into the image of Jesus. If I think that was done the day I prayed the sinner's prayer, then I well, just ask my wife. You know, is he has he arrived yet? No, he's he we're on this journey of transformation, and and that prayer and my baptism were landmarks on the journey, but they're certainly not the fullness of this past, present, and future salvation. Some people are gonna ask this, um, yeah, but don't what about uh you must be born again? It's like, absolutely. I'm just saying Cornelius. Which is in what passage, by the way?
Michael John CusickI know for our listeners. No, I actually don't know.
Brad JersakUm so Jesus says this in John chapter three. You you unless you're born again or born from above is probably a better translation, you you know, you won't enter the kingdom. It's like, well, wait a minute. Um when does that happen? It's like, well, it is when we experience experience the fullness of life in Christ. But what my point is, yes, you got to be born again, but when but Cornelius already knew God, so when was he conceived? So here's a way of seeing it.
Michael John CusickAnd Cornelius is in Acts, right?
Brad JersakHe's in Acts chapter 10. Okay. So Cornelius is this picture of someone who had already been conceived by God at the cross, and then he is born. We call it the breaking of the waters of baptism. You know, when women's waters break, they have a baby. That's in our ancient liturgies, that the breaking of the waters of baptism of our rebirth. Um, so we acknowledge the necessity of a rebirth. I'm just saying we've Cornelius was gestating ever since the cross. You've been gestating. Everybody I meet is someone in the womb of God waiting to be born.
Michael John CusickThat's a beautiful image.
Brad JersakHe already conceived them.
Michael John CusickAnd uh I think you were the one that first talked about this, but that the word mercy uh in the Hebrew rahamen is more accurately defined as a womb than the withholding of a punishment.
Brad JersakYeah, yeah. And in Greek it's all the all the manifestations of the goodness of God. So for for people who
um who know God in the sense of, well, he's generic and they pray, and okay, that's nice, but I I want them to know the many mercies of God that come through beholding the Lamb of God, beholding the one on the cross who says, actually, let me show you my dad, my papa.
Michael John CusickHow did we get uh to this place where in 1980, when I had a uh a conversion, uh I was told that grace is just something given that you don't deserve, with the emphasis on don't deserve, and mercy is taking away something that you do deserve.
Brad JersakYeah, that's certainly uh a minimizing and a departure from the ancient uses of that word. So historically, you know, mercy wasn't just Withholding that there's a pun in Greek between mercy and olive trees, olives and olive oil and lamp oil, and just the superabundant generosity of an olive tree and all that it produces for us. They compared that to the mercies of God, just uh and the oil that flows from, you know. And then with grace, um grace is much more than unmerited favor. Um in the in the Orthodox world, grace is the uncreated energies of the indwelling spirit in you. It's the tr it grace is, since it's uncreated, it's God.
Michael John CusickSay
that again.
Brad JersakThe uncreated energy. The uncreated energies of the indwelling spirit of God that transforms you. So grace, then I use grace as a name for the Holy Spirit. It's a she. You know who's in you, who's changing you. It's your ex it's your direct experience of of uh transfiguration from the inside out.
Michael John CusickSo it's about a presence that uh needs to be unwrapped. Yeah. Uh again and again and again, as opposed to I'm saved by grace and now I'm done with grace.
Brad JersakRight. It would be more like I I love the idea of surrender. It really uh it's important to me that we surrender to this grace that is at work in us. And you can resist it, but it's uh I think of surrender um like if I go to um one of these chair massages when I'm in an airport. Um I was in Denver airport and I'm getting a chair massage, and this this powerful black woman's working on my on my shoulder blades, and she says, um uh, stop fighting me. And I'm like, oh, I gotta surrender to like the work that's being done to that's needing the the knots out of my back. And so with the Holy Spirit at work in us, transforming us, we can resist that, but like stop fighting.
Michael John CusickAnd and if you're like me, a lot of the time, um it's happened a couple of times. I've not had a
lot of massages or chair neck rubs, but you don't even know that you're resisting.
Brad JersakNo, I didn't know at all. And and then so she had pointed out, and like, oh, and suddenly I realized my shoulders were up around my ears, and I just needed to drop them and let go. And it feels to me like that's that's how we participate in grace. You participate in grace through surrender.
Michael John CusickAnd you get to drop your shoulders and relax and just hear the voice of God saying, Shh, shh, shh, just just be a child. Yeah. So your book title is in, and that makes me think of the contrast, out. Yeah. And in the evangelical world that I have been a part of for many years now, we have this fascination and um uh demand to speak in terms of in and out. And faith and God and the gospel are mysterious. What do you think fuels and drives that black and white in out as opposed to what seems to be the case with the gospel is that there's a third way. There's a there's a another reality that faith actually requires us to enter into.
Brad JersakA lot of it is founded on the belief or delusion of separation. So we told people tens of thousands of times, uh
your sin has separated you from God. And well, wait, doesn't scripture say that? I not not anywhere that I can see. At least uh the narrative the narrative is that we turn from God and he pursues us. Adam and Eve leave the garden and he pursues them. Cain kills his brother, and God puts a mark of protection on him. And over and over we see the people of God running into um into a real experience of alienation where they're not where they've turned from God's love, but God's love did not turn off. So Saint Antony the Great said this God no more turns away from the sinner than the sun ceases to shine for a blind man. Oh, I love that. And so this so what's going on there is that um when we assume there's separation from God, this great chasm in our diagrams, then we assume that those people are are separated, they're out, they don't have a relationship with God until they say our prayer.
Whereas the reality is more like this God is forever in pursuit of them, always oriented towards them. If they turn their back on him, he's still there, but they may experience that as alienation. So I make a real distinction between there is no separation ontologically, that means in our being, there's no separation. God is everywhere, he fills all things and he pursues all people. But existentially, that is, in our experience, we feel alienated. And that's because we've shut our eyes to the sun, but the sun didn't cease shining. And so I think that's the problem where the in is you know, of course, we're using spatial metaphors, just saying in and out is a spatial metaphor. Right. And what we do want to say is um the father's house is open, come back in. Okay, so there's an example where you're I guess I'm out, but what does that mean? It doesn't mean I'm not a son anymore. And it's almost like we we orphaned people with our theology. You're not a son until you come home. It's like, no, he's already a son, he's just living in the pig pen.
Michael John CusickSo let me let me jump in, and we are going to extend this podcast. So if you only budgeted exactly 30 minutes, you will have to add this into your schedule. Let's go down the road for a minute. Um, you have unpacked this probably better than than anybody I know in writing. Psalm 22 and the common mistake and assumptions around verse 1, my god, my god, why have you forsaken me? And then, and I literally never heard this until I read it in one of your books, Habakkuk 1. Yeah. So unpack that because I really want people to have a scriptural context for this so they don't just uh write this conversation off.
Brad JersakOkay, good. Yeah, so Psalm 22, verse 1, that's um the basis of a whole theology of the cross where we say God turned his face away, the father turned his face away from the sun. And how do we well, why did we say that? Where did we come up with that? Oh, it's because Christ said, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And then we would say, and he wasn't mistaken, was he? It's like,
actually, that's not what's going on. He's quoting a whole messianic psalm that describes the crucifixion, Psalm 22, and it's really explicit. It talks about his hands and feet being pierced, his it talks about his garments being uh uh distributed by lots and so on. But he starts out in verse one, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And he gets even worse. He says, I'm a worm and not a man. So if you want to take that literally, okay, but whatever.
Michael John CusickThat's where we get worm theology, right?
Brad JersakBut I the idea is keep reading. So you get down to verse 22 to 24, and there's a big shift. And he says this um, that he has not despised the affliction of the afflicted one, he has not turned his face away from me. He heard my cry for help. So this tells me a lot. One is Christ enters the experience of human alienation, that the God who is present cannot be seen or felt in the midst of his grief and anguish. His father is right there with him. In fact, he says that in John. I you're going to think I'm alone, but I'm not alone. My father is with me. He just says it, right? So, but he enters that cry, he that cry of despair for the despairing to save the despairing, even those who've taken their own lives. But then he concludes, he has some kind of experience that says in fact, the truth is, tell my brothers, tell the assembly to praise God, because he didn't turn his face away. And then he describes what the it was not a cry of dereliction. He says explicitly, it was a cry for help, and God heard the cry for help and answered it.
Michael John CusickWow. I I uh I hear that again and again and again. And I know I probably say this a lot on the podcast, but it it's it's uh I just exhale, first of all, because it reinforces something that my sensibilities and my heart has never felt um aligned with this idea that God looks away. So two things. There's there's this other thing that fuels this, that we take Psalm 22, 1, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And what I used to believe was simply that God and Jesus were separated, that the Father not just like turned around and didn't look upon him, but because, quote, God cannot look upon sin, that he couldn't look at Jesus and they were separated. But that is theontologically impossible because that means that the Trinity, eternally one substance, would have somehow have to had to be parsed up like a like Thanksgiving pie. You know, here's a slice of the Father over here, but the rest of the Trinity is there. And so I have this crucifix that I'm
taking off out right now from under my shirt, and it's the it's the Trinity uh cross. And on the cross is Jesus, and behind Jesus, the Father is holding him, and above the Father, the the Holy Spirit dove is there. And uh this has become an icon and an image that has literally just become um for me food for my soul, that this is who God is, and this is the God that Jesus reveals.
Brad JersakYeah, that's so important because, well, first of all, splitting the Trinity is formally a heresy. It's tritheism. We believe this is in the weekly liturgy um from the ancient days, Saint Basil the Great and John Chrysostom, that we worship one God, one in essence and undivided. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one in essence and undivided. Any division of that one God, and you no longer have one God, you know. So the issue is where is the Father located on Good Friday? We used to teach that he was that he was turning his back on Christ and pouring out his wrath onto him for our sins. We I explicitly preached that. I used to I used to teach and preach that too. Those very words. Well, what does the Bible actually say? Sometimes it's good to go back there. And um, so we've got uh Habakkuk one, where it's Habakkuk complaining. Why do you why um I know your eyes are holy and pure and you cannot look on sin? And then he the next phrase is so why do you? And we didn't even bother reading the entire verse. So that's a travesty. But but okay, so where's the father? Well, Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5, God, and he's referring to the Father, was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting their sins against them. So there's not this payment or punishment for sin by a God who's turned from Christ. God is in Christ, forgiving us radically. And the other is, of course, that's like your cross. Zechariah 12 says this. Yahweh says, Yahweh, who is Yahweh? Is it just the Father, or is it Father, Son, and Spirit? Well, that's another question. But it's Yahweh says this, you will look on me, the one you have pierced. Where's God? He's on the cross. Where's Yahweh? He's on the cross. And so Father, Son, and Spirit through the Son experience crucifixion at the hands of angry, violent men. And then he forgives them.
Michael John CusickI get chills as I as I think about that. So let me let me just state this back to you. Um, and you're giving all this biblical evidence that when people say Jesus died on the cross for my sins, they could accurately say, Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit died on the cross and were on the cross um to reconcile the world and to uh undo that whole system of sacrifice.
Brad JersakYeah, so it's important to us to say that um Father, Son, Son, and Spirit are undivided in in all that they do, but it is through the Son who assumes humanity, and ab thus enables him to die and enter Hades. He can't die unless he becomes a human. But because he's still God, he can't die. So what do you do when God enters Hades in a human body that allows him to die, but he can't die? Well, it blows up Hades from or death. He destroys death
from the inside. It's like antimatter, you know.
Michael John CusickThis this is going to uh uh hopefully keep people up at night. Uh and I really truly hope that people wrestle with these questions because uh as I have been on my journey of walking with Jesus and walking through deep brokenness, there have been categories about God that have just expanded, and I'm I am um more certain about a few things and I'm less certain about a lot of things. And what I am certain about is that if you want to know what God is like, you look at the cross, and Jesus says, uh the Father and I are one, and he quite um magnificently states that just as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. And I like to say the paraphrase of that is that God the Father loves me and loves you just as much as he loves Jesus.
Wow, that's intense, eh?
Michael John CusickVersus, well, you know, Jesus is his favorite, and you know, he gets a really good present on his birthday, and we get something less because the budget's already run dry. Socks. Yeah, ugly socks. Um one final point here, and you've already touched on it. This almost Americana maxim of God cannot look upon sin. And yes, those words are in scripture, but the context is so why do you in Habakkuk 1. But all of the reality of Jesus is incarnation. So your book is in, and this word of incarnation that Jesus put on flesh, or Peterson uh translates it in the message of that God put on skin. The incarnation precisely means that God cannot just look on sin, but he can walk amongst sin and and um talk to prostitutes and he's he saw it every day.
Brad JersakAnd so for those who say, Well god, you know, God's God's too holy to look on sin, I I just have to say, well, are you telling me Jesus wasn't God at all times? Yeah, you can't possibly think I'm the heretic then. You know, that's that's crazy talk. The whole point of the incarnation was to dwell among us and to come close to us and not only uh in not only tolerate our sin but but endure it to the point of removing it.
Michael John CusickAnd there's such precise prophetic detail of this incarnation of coming into a sinful world. So David, the man after God's own heart, but who committed adultery, who arranged for the murder of the woman he impregnated, whose family was dysfunctional, whose son raped his stepdaughter, who on and on and on, it's through him that Jesus was born through that lineage. Then uh Jesus is born to an unwed peasant teenager.
Um and then he's not born in a high-end birthing center or in a palace, he's born in a stable with poop and blood and straw, and he's homeless in that situation, and Mary and Joseph become refugees, having to flee to Egypt. And the story goes on and on and on, where all the details, many of which are are prophesied in the Old Testament, all of those details come back to and point to the cross to say this is what God is like.
Brad JersakIt's amazing that that
is good news, but it's it's good news precisely for the poor and the broken and the enslaved and for the refugee and for the peasant and so on. It it's almost the privilege of the poor to understand God as uh lamb-like, and then to be able to express that in ways to to those of us with a lot of privilege. Um, and that requires us to enter poverty of spirit, to bankrupt the ego, so that we can have open hands to also experience that.
Michael John CusickThat makes me think of, and we'll need to wrap up here, uh Teresa of Lesoux. Uh I love to quote her. She said that our poverty is our single capacity for God. Wow. That the only thing we can bring, the only thing that really allows us to have capacity for God is our poverty, our spiritual, emotional, financial, relational, psychological, I got no game. Yep. If you are a reader, get Brad
Jersek's book. This is your not your newest book. This this came out kind of simultaneously with a more Christ-like way.
Brad JersakYeah. They were once one book, and we they became unlike the Trinity, they were divided.
Michael John CusickSo get any book by Brad Jersek. Um and by the way, uh your book, A More Christ-like God, um, I love how it's gaining traction and more and more people are finding out about it. And just to give some street cred to it, the cover of your book, A More Christ-like God, Eugene Peterson,
uh, who we have talked about a lot on this podcast, said that it is the finest piece of atonement theology that he has encountered. And that was late in life. Uh and that is a that's a big, big, big statement. Um, so the book is in Incarnation and Inclusion, Abba and Lamb, and I'm gonna close by saying thank you to you for being here and then give a quote. Okay. The quote is from Dr. Bruce Shelley, uh, the late great church historian, a conservative church historian, uh, from Denver Seminary. And in the opening line of his uh now renowned church history book, there is a sentence that says Christianity is the only religion in the world whose central point is the humiliation of its God. And I think everything we've been talking about here is uh that the in of being in Christ, indwelling, in a place of knowing God's favor, uh is because that what God looks like is he shows himself by being humiliated. Uh thank you for your work, for your study, for uh the diligence and labor it takes to not just dig deep into the early church fathers and the scriptures, but uh for the labor it is to put all this down on paper. You are a gift.
Brad JersakThanks, Michael.
Brian BeattySo we've wrapped up another episode of Restoring the Soul. We want you to know that Restoring the Soul is so much more than a podcast. In fact, the heart of what we have done for nearly 20 years is intensive counseling. When you can't wait months or years to get out of the rut you're in, our intensive counseling programs in Colorado allow you to experience deep change in half day blocks over two weeks. To learn more, visit restoring the soul.com. That's restoring the soul.com.